Opinion: Obama Pulls a Reagan on Missile Defense

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... welcome to Opinion Journal I'm Mary Kissel ... the Republican National Committee issued a scathing analysis of the party's electoral failures today ... you were to dissect that document shortly but first week I editorial page editor Paul GBO here ... to talk about another big news event it did not get that much attention ... the Obama administration's you turn on ... missile defense and Paul ... gotta love it when the administration trucks big news on a Friday ... of more than on ... the upgrade for us journalists on what provokes this a change of heart on the missile defense ... well I think that the recognition that ... there's a growing threat from high CPMC nuclear tipped perhaps from ... from the likes of Iran ... and North Korea ... and down to how we have to dress that percentage increase in not an immediate to the whole plant ... but to ... move many analysts believe that North Korean missiles can already target Alaska ... and why he ... is only a matter of time before ... it looks like they will have ... the ability to put nuclear weapons on those missiles ... Amma for too long it will be able to go one better Continental so we have to meet the press so it's it's not just the west coast of the nine states and also our allies in Asia Pacific ... Japan ... and Australia which is very very far south also within ... the range here so defense Secretary Cable says he's installing ... fourteen additional ground based missile interceptors in Fort Greeley ... on and on the Buffy Alaskan and the ... California site will be next between the two is how we should be doing here or is there more we do know my type of pay cash ... I mean this administration basically stopped those deployments in two thousand I remember these two sites in California Alaska were developed under the Bush administration ... Obama came in and said well that's it we don't need any more he's never been a plan to add on ... the additional missiles that additional interceptors and a plan to deploy a third site isn't in your ... and he discovered that ... I am done as well as the behest of content ... well it was part of the negotiation with good we do the prudent didn't like those sites ... others are radar site and an interceptor site ... Seoul based ... got rid of those and did that led the way to the arms control deal led to negotiate with with Putin's part of the reset of relations with Russia ... aam but yes there's more we could do I'm happy to talk about one more week ... of school and cutting back so that the Reagan era and Star Wars for space based interceptors War ... II you don't like that that you when you're the technologies that we can deploy here to protect the lexical well there are some missile defenses theater missile defenses that are based on Aegis cruisers we've got some in the Northern Pacific I mean the northwest Pacific and we got some and I think we've got one in the eastern med to Japan a godsend to Japan so that and and that's ... he won a layered defense that's what we can use it the first layer doesn't get a second third can ... I think we need do more and boost phase is that we get missiles not while they're ... coming down ... kind of a last ... ditch effort ... the weather going on ... aam we should do more on space technology ... but I think fundamentally we also need a third site in East and East Coast ... and asked for block against of potential strike from Iran to ... the site in Europe was designed supposed to be back on a protection ... but now the missed ration also announced on Friday it's not that it's not good deal ... it's not going to deploy that ... defense against inter continental ballistic missiles ... to well past twenty fourteen we need a bigger effort in an earlier effort ... on the East Coast is the one hand I can until I think the yellow where we're sitting in your no not yet but it's developing and it has I forget the exact range but do they have their missile ... ranges include value up much of Europe ... I and I think it's gonna grow over time and of course they want to get the ability to strike United States they would love nothing better ... than to be able to say ... you want to stop us from invading this or that country ... your own capital cities are up ... are at risk okay well at least a positive development ... at the White House wants to talk about